Thread: Follow-Along with RobA's Artistic Regional RPG Map

After the bump map we now have this. You can adjust the opacity of the bump map to make it less noticeable if desired:

I did. Knocked it down to 43%.

Merge down the difference layer, invert it, then bring up the layers dialog and adjust it to be a wider band of white on black. This will be used as the layer mask for the dirt….

Awww, crap! I was blowing through the steps until we got to that dang histogram looking thing again...

NO idea what this means, so i just moved the three little arrows close together in the middle, kind of like Rob's example pic.

Go back to the Dirt Layer and add a layer mask, using the “Land Mask” channel. Now right click on the layer mask and select “Apply layer”. This will erase everything that is not above the land.

Not for me. I was surprised when nothing happened.

http://i852.photobucket.com/albums/a...notherwall.jpg

Hi Sharpe, unfortunately I don't use Gimp so I can't help, but there lots of gimp users out there. Hopefully someone will step in and help you out shortly.

Pretty simple your Sea Shore layer is filled with blue (RobA's isn't), aside from that the masks and everything are fine as far as I can tell. So just select that layer make sure you aren't editing the mask for the layer and fill it with with white usually it's set as the BG color as default.

HI -

Just a comment on your first few posts. The map you start with already has much coastal detail. The proces of blurring and adding in noise is for when you don't have that detail! There is little value in doing it if you have a detailed shape you are trying to maintain. In such a case, check out Old Guy's tutorial: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?9056

-Rob A>

Hi Sharpe, I will re-iterate what RobA just said. I too tried his tutorial with a predefined coastal shape. If you follow the steps with all the blurs you will wipe out your predefined coast rather than fractalize it. I haven't tried old guys method specifically, but something like it. I think I see what is going on with your coastal smear issue. Right under where you wrote "BLUE" is the key. It says: "Create a new layer called Seashore and fill with lightest water color (water 1) add layer mask and make sure invert is not selected". So my guess is that you didn't fill a layer with the light water color, didn't add or added the wrong mask. See if that helps.

{EDIT}
You might also post a screen cap of your layers dialog or just the xcf file if we are not giving you the right directions.

I tried again to faithfully recreate the 1986 Dragon Warrior 1 map and think I've gotten somewhere this time.




This is with the original map at 10% opacity so you can see just how surprisingly close it is to the original:


Time to start in on the mountains... I'll place them reminiscent of the Nintendo map, without sacrificing too much realism.